Risk

The board game RISK is excellent. There’s few things more enjoyable than inviting a few friends round, challenging them to a game of world domination, pulverising their armies, and then beheading them in the cellar for being rubbish. Oh… hang on… forget that last bit.

Surely then, RISK on the Playstation will be even better? Just picture the beautifully rendered armies marching across a pseudo-3D world map and engaging in totally impressive armed conflict? Isn’t that what Playstation RISK is? Er… no, actually.

WHAT HAPPENED?What Playstation RISK actually delivers is a two-dimensional world map, containing armies represented by a flag and a number. Oh… exciting! You don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing your forces gradually building and building until they fill your territories like you do in the board game.

Combat takes place, as in the board game, with dice, although they are thrown by the computer without you even having to lift a finger. The only thing you do have to do is decide who to attack, and which territory cards to discard. Speaking of which, the computer cheats!

The rules allow you to collect five cards, at which time you must cash three of them in for extra armies – and yet the computer managed to cash in two sets of three at once – the cheating b*stard!

There is a second version of RISK on the disk under the promising title of Ultimate RISK. And it does offer more features, such as the building of forts for your territories, generals to command your armies, random weather conditions, rebellious locals and some nicely rendered combat cut scenes. However, this doesn’t really bring any more excitement to the game. It’s still very slow, and rather boring. Even the replacement of dice with battle cards for the combat sequences doesn’t really help.

It’s a shame, because the board game really is great, and this game could have been so good too. It’s just that with all the other PlayStation wargame titles around – where you control every aspect of the battles and watch your massed armies marching across detailed maps, rolling dice to decide which flag vanishes from a specific location just isn’t much fun!